


and out of the blue, i fell for you

by renlybardatheon (aheartcalledhome)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Meet-Cute, oh my god they were neighbors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25586131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aheartcalledhome/pseuds/renlybardatheon
Summary: Arya and Sansa Stark living together could end in a nuclear arms race, but at least the cute boy across the hall and his baker's apprentice roommate have a gnarly brownie recipe.(Or: Arya meets the love of her life over a suspicious looking brownie.)
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 4
Kudos: 105





	and out of the blue, i fell for you

**Author's Note:**

> i challenged myself to write 2,000 words while listening to [kacey musgraves' butterflies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFTAVskl9rc) and post it without editing, because i couldn't sleep and needed something to do. 
> 
> well, roughly an hour and a half after i started, here is my anti-masterpiece. reverse masterpiece. 
> 
> i'm not quite sure how i feel about this, but i hope i did my attempt at something new justice! i haven't written any gendrya before, so this is brand new to me!
> 
> xoxo,  
> s

Winterfell could be continents away from King’s Landing, for how little the two cities have in common. The distance only amplifies the differences she can see out of her window. She’s been repeating the number to herself, in miles, in kilometers, in feet, in every measurement that she’s been able to find, because it seems too large. It seems too absurd, the idea that her parents would be more than one train ride away, that her siblings might be further than a few doors down.

She certainly hadn’t felt like this when Jon, Robb and Theon had struck out on their own a few years ago nor when Sansa had gone away to grad school. 

Jon had been fiercely independent for as long as Arya could remember, getting his driver’s license the day he was cleared to take the test and never looking back. When he’d told Arya’s parents that he was going to train at Castle Black after graduation, no one had been particularly surprised. What had surprised them all was when he came home for the first time with a red headed giant named Tormund who had proceeded to eat them out of house and home while singing Jon’s praises endlessly. 

Robb and Theon had stuck close by and were home for dinner often enough that it was impossible to miss them too much. While they were busy with their grown up lives, Robb with his antique shop and Theon with art school, they had always made time for the Stark siblings. More than enough, if Arya had any say in it.

Reminders of Sansa hadn’t been few or far between either. She had texted Arya with an almost annoying frequency. Arya had teased her to no end about it, because someone had to. Robb was too kind, Bran was too sweet, and Rickon was too eager. Sansa had shrugged it off with practised ease and told everyone that would listen that antagonizing was what little sisters were for. After years of poking at each other’s sore spots for sport, they knew well where to strike to do damage and which old wounds were better left alone. 

It hadn’t felt like something was ending, when Robb, Jon, and Sansa had left home. But now it was her turn, and the whole world felt like it’d been knocked off balance. Arya had been tempering that disorienting rush with a series of onlys. She was only moving in with Sansa, so it couldn’t be too different from living at home. She was only moving for a job, and she could get a job anywhere. But now, faced with the finality of moving, even onlys don’t feel like enough to stem the oncoming tide of sadness.

Her parents and siblings had converged upon their apartment to see Arya off into adulthood. She’d made no secret of the fact that she detested all the invasion into her space that inevitably came part and parcel with a Stark family gathering, but even Arya could admit that it had been nice to watch them leave little touches behind, little signatures scrawled on her life. 

Her parents bustle about the living room with a to do list a mile long. Robb and Theon hang up her ratty old posters, which he and Theon had framed as a surprise to her, in her bedroom. Jon hides the gutted carcasses of cardboard boxes in the most creative places, so she and Sansa can reuse them the next time they move, before setting up Nymeria and Lady’s water and food bowls in a corner of the kitchen. Bran and Rickon Google things that would make steam blow out of their mother’s ears in between setting up the coffee maker that their father had pawned off on Arya and Sansa, claiming it was too complicated for him to use with any regularity.

Robb and Theon have to leave first. These days, they have to hire a dog sitter to make sure Grey Wind, who has major separation anxiety issues, won’t piss all over their carpeted floors in grief at their absence, and there’s only so long anyone who isn’t Robb can put up with Grey Wind. Robb wraps Arya up in a bear hug and reminds her to call at least once a week after Theon has finished mussing up her hair.

Lady howls for Robb for nearly half an hour after he leaves, disconsolate, as Sansa begs her to quiet down. Nymeria, ever the stoic one, watches her sister with something akin to disgusted resignation. 

Their parents, Bran, and Rickon are next. The drive back to Winterfell is long, lonely, and involves too many cliffside passes for her liking, and Ned Stark is a notoriously careful driver who hates being out after dark. She isn’t surprised that the second the to do list has been checked and double checked for the last time, he budgets just enough time for everyone to get an emotional goodbye and rushes her mother and little brothers out the door in record time. 

Jon is the last to leave, solemnly pressing a kiss to Sansa’s forehead, then Arya’s, before making them both promise that they will call him if they need anything at all. He cracks all sorts of old and tired jokes from their childhood before he too is gone, his heavy footsteps disappearing down the hallway.

Arya feels like she’s been punched in the chest, as Sansa neatly labels compartments in hanging organizers that Arya will never learn to use, and sprays the couch that Arya refused to leave in her old dorm room with enough Febreeze to kill an adult elephant. 

Nymeria, ever the helper, knocks the can over and instantly sneezes so loudly that Lady, who had been comfortably sleeping under the coffee table, startles awake.

“Well?” Sansa redoes her ponytail. Lady puts her head down on her crossed paws and goes back to her nap. “Aren’t you going to do anything?”

“No. Mom and Dad did everything worth doing already.” Arya rolls her eyes, kicking her feet. If she’s going to be cast in the role of petulant toddler by her abhorrently responsible older sister, she’s going to play it with gusto. “I’m going to lay on the floor, actually. That’s what I’ll do. Check that one off the list.”

She’s afraid of setting foot in her bedroom because it will mean that the room in Winterfell that she’d lost her first tooth in, the twin bed that Nymeria had slept in during her first night at home, and the nightlight Robb had bought her with his very first paycheck are no longer hers. When she crosses that threshold again, the things she left behind will all belong to an old Arya, one that ceased to exist when the moving van left the driveway. 

Sansa turns on Margaery Tyrell’s latest album, a soft, guitar heavy commentary on love, heartbreak, and all the little moments in between, and Arya rolls her eyes every few minutes while Sansa hums along with her eyes closed. She likes maybe two of the sixteen songs on this album, but Sansa swears it saved her life, so Arya keeps her protests to a minimum. They aren’t the little girls that ripped each other to shreds at the first opportunity anymore. 

They’re letting each other live now, however much eye, ear, and nose closing that takes.

Arya’s convinced the Stark words should be changed to “I Am Doing What I Am Doing Because I Was Told Not To And I Don’t Like To Listen”, but her mother says that’s “not formal enough” and “doesn’t have the same classic ring to it as Winter Is Coming”. Of course nothing fun gets past Catelyn Stark’s gatekeeping.

All of the corny “live and let live” bullshit she’s fed herself doesn’t change the fact that she’s relieved when someone knocks on the door, a monkey wrench thrown into the works of her sister’s inner world externalized, and greets the intruder with glee, throwing the door open with enthusiasm beyond anything she’s felt in weeks.

“Hello. I’m, uh, from just across the hall, actually. Number Six. My roommate thought I should bring this over.” The mystery man from Number Six holds out a tray of misshapen brown bricks that Arya is hoping are just badly cut brownies. They look too dense to be safe for human consumption, and she’s tempted to test the weight of one by chucking it at Sansa, but Nymeria would pounce for it, and that would be a whole new set of problems. “As an act of goodwill or something.”

The first thing she notices is that he’s tall. She can almost hear Rickon snickering in her mind, reminding her that anyone’s tall compared to her. His dark hair is shorn close to his skull and it makes his jawline pop, not that it needs any help. The wrinkle between his eyebrows tells her he’s a habitual frowner. His shoulders, barely kept in check by a well worn black t shirt, are the broadest she’s ever seen.

“I said a welcome gift, Gendry!” A voice booms out from behind the door to Gendry’s apartment. “Go on, tell her!”

“If you’ve got so much to say, you should’ve done it yourself then, Hot Pie!” He calls over his shoulder. Laughter dances in his too blue eyes the whole time, so he’s not serious. Arya raises an eyebrow when his eyes settle on her again and he cringes, grimacing. “Sorry about that. He’s a little… particular, about his baking. It’s his recipe, actually. Best in the city.”

“Best in the city?” Arya says. “I’ll take your word for it. Haven’t been here long enough to know.”

That’s a lie. She knows the best brownies in the city are made at the Kingsguard Cafe, because Sansa’s waxed poetic about them at three in the morning far too often, and Sansa’s got the biggest sweet tooth out of anyone Arya knows. She takes one of Hot Pie’s creations just to be polite, before realizing that Gendry intended for her to take the whole dish. But now it’s too late, and she doesn’t know what to do, and one of her hands is full of brownie and she can’t just put it back.

“I could show you around!” Gendry blurts out. “If you’d like that, of course.” He spots Sansa over her shoulder and looks absolutely mortified for it. “Or I guess you and your roommate might have plans. I don’t mean to overstep. We’ve only just met and, well, that’s got to be awkward, isn’t it? For you?”

“My sister is the most boring person alive.” Arya says, and steps out into the hall, shutting the door behind her, before Sansa can protest. “Are you free now?”

“I… I guess I am.” Gendry shifts his grip on the glass dish. “Can we leave this in your apartment? For your sister?”

She takes a healthy bite out of the brownie and nearly dies of shock -- they’re magnificent.

“Your roommate is a wizard.” Arya says solemnly. “You can tell him that. Holy shit. My sister is going to die.” She opens the door a crack, just enough to see Sansa’s face clearly. “Sansa, you’ve got to try these!” Against her better instincts, Arya chucks one right at Sansa’s head, and to her delight, Sansa catches it, though she crushes it awkwardly in her first. “Oh no, Sansa, now you’ve got crumbs all over the floor.” Arya says, delighted. “Oh no, now you’ve got to clean them up!”

“Arya!” Sansa shrieks, exasperated, and Arya sprints down the hallway, cackling all the while. 

“Come on, Gendry! You said you’d show me around!” She calls back to him, as she takes the stairs two at a time.

He is out of breath by the time he catches up with her at the bottom of the stairwell, ruddy cheeked and smiling, but the lights in his eyes are dancing again, and she thinks she likes it.

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to make a new friend (or just talk about this fic, if that's too much pressure), [come find me on twitter](https://www.twitter.com/aheartcalldhome) or leave a comment down below!


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